Takis Fotopoulos (Greek:Τάκης Φωτόπουλος born October 14, 1940) is a political philosopher and economist who founded the Inclusive Democracy movement. He is noted for his synthesis of classical democracy with libertarian socialism[6] and the radical currents in the new social movements. He was an academic, and has written many books and over 900 articles,. He is the editor of The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy (which succeeded Democracy & Nature) and author of Towards An Inclusive Democracy (1997) in which the foundations of the Inclusive Democracy project were set.[13] Fotopoulos is Greek and lives in London.[14]

Early life

Fotopoulos was born on the Greek island of Chios and his family moved to Athens soon afterwards. After earning degrees in Economics and Political Science and in Law from the University of Athens, he moved to London in 1966 for postgraduate study at the London School of Economics on a Varvaressos scholarship from Athens University. He was a student syndicalist and activist in Athens[15] and then a political activist in London, taking an active part in the 1968 student protests in London, and in organisations of the revolutionary Greek Left during the struggle against the Greek military junta of 1967–1974. During this period, he was a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Groups in London, which published the newspaper Μαμή ("Midwife", from the Marxian dictum, "violence is the midwife of revolution"), for which he wrote several articles.[16]

Fotopoulos is married since 1966 with Sia Mamareli (a former lawyer); they have a son, Costas, (born in 1974), he is a Composer and Pianist.

Fotopoulos developed the political project of Inclusive Democracy (ID) in 1997 (an exposition can be found in Towards An Inclusive Democracy). The first issue of Society & Nature declared that:

"our ambition is to initiate an urgently needed dialogue on the crucial question of developing a new liberatory social project, at a moment in History when the Left has abandoned this traditional role."[19]

and specified that the new project should be seen as the outcome of a synthesis of the democratic, libertarian socialist and radical Green traditions.[20] Since then, a dialogue has followed in the pages of the journal, in which supporters of the automony project like Cornelius Castoriadis, social ecology supporters including its founder Murray Bookchin, and Green activists and academics like Steven Best have taken part.

The starting point for Fotopoulos' work is that the world faces a multi-dimensional crisis (economic, ecological, social, cultural and political) which is caused by the concentration of power in elites, as a result of the market economy, representative democracy and related forms of hierarchical structure. An inclusive democracy, which involves the equal distribution of power at all levels, is seen not as a utopia (in the negative sense of the word) or a "vision" but as perhaps the only way out of the present crisis, with trends towards its creation manifesting themselves today in many parts of the world. Fotopoulos is in favor of market abolitionism, although he would not identify himself as a market abolitionist as such because he considers market abolition as one aspect of an inclusive democracy which refers only to the economic democracy component of it. He proposes a model of economic democracy for a stateless, marketless and moneyless economy but he considers that the economic democracy component is equally significant to the other components of ID, i.e. political or direct democracy, economic democracy, ecological democracy and democracy in the social realm. Fotopoulos' work has been critically assessed by important activists, theorists and scholars.[6][21][22][23][24][25]

The New World Order in Action. Vol. 1: Globalization, the Brexit Revolution and the 'Left' - Towards a Democratic Community of Sovereign Nations (San Diego, Cal., US: Progressive Press, 2016). ISBN 978-1615779352.

↑ He was elected as a member of the Administrative Council of the Law students Union in 1958-59, following the first victory of a Left alliance in which he participated against EKOF, an extreme right wing student association controlled by the 'deep' Greek state , which a few years later, in 1963, was responsible for the murder of Left parliamentarian Grigoris Lambrakis and 4 years later of the military coup which led to the military dictatorship (1967-74).

↑ As testified by the Left composer Lakis Karalis in an interview in the Athens newspaper Eleftherotypia (06/09/2008) and in an Arts web site Προβολέας.

A talk given by Takis Fotopoulos about the Internationalization of the Capitalist Market Economy and the project of Inclusive Democracy (University of Vermont (US), 19 April 1996), followed by a discussion with Murray Bookchin, Dan Chodorkoff and others. Video in 3 parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Retrieved 21 April 2014.